Month: July 2010

The Haskell County, Oklahoma, Commission has 10 years to pay attorneys’ fees of $199,000 after it was forced to remove an 8-foot-tall Ten Commandments monument.

The county has been in litigation with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma since 2006, after it allowed a resident to pay for and erect the granite monument on the courthouse lawn in Stigler.

After a series of court decisions up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, the ACLU prevailed. The monument was removed in March, and the attorneys’ fees were settled last week, ACLU attorney Micheal Salem said…

“It’s a very unwelcoming thing for those who do not subscribe to the Judeo (Christian) belief system. The government should not be in the business of showing favoritism or endorsing religion,” ACLU’s Chuck Thornton said. “The ACLU would never have been involved if it was somewhere other than public property. We don’t want to squelch anyone’s rights of free expression.”

Haskell County is a community of more than 12,000 residents southeast of Tulsa.

Let’s see – that’s a bit over $16.58 apiece just to show the world how important their religion must be.

I don’t know about y’all; but, if I had a spare $16 to blow on what I believe – I’d probably spend it on buying someone a meal or supplies for schoolchildren.

Controversial sex arousal tests used on young offenders have been permanently halted, following news that a medical technician working in the program has been charged with an unrelated sexual offence.

Mary Polak, the B.C. minister of children and family development, said her ministry learned Thursday that the technician, who was working on contract, was charged earlier this month. The charge is unrelated to his work for the ministry or the youth facility where he was employed, she said…

The tests, carried out by the government-sponsored Youth Forensic Psychiatric Service, involve attaching a “penile plesthysmograph” to adolescent boys’ genitals to measure sexual responses. The youths — aged 12 to 17 — were shown photographs of naked or semi-naked adults, children and infants. The images were accompanied by a story, read out loud, that described coercive or forced intercourse. The test is supposed to determine whether young offenders have gained control of their sexual impulses through treatment, and to predict the likelihood of them reoffending.

Polak said the B.C. Civil Liberties Association notified her of the tests only several days ago, although they have been administered for 20 years…

20 years!?

After instructing staff to look into the testing protocol, she said: “The information provided to me has led me to believe there’s no reason for us to continue such an intrusive practice that is so concerning, when we have other treatments and assessment practices to treat youth individuals in our care…”

Similarly, while the BCCLA believes Polak’s decision to end the sex tests is “good news,” it also plans to investigate the ethical protocols that authorized this research in the first place.

We have the occasional loony city council in our neck of the prairie that would authorize something like this. The only difference being that our loonies would also photograph the juvenile offenders’ aura.

Senate Republicans blocked a $30-billion plan to help community banks boost lending to small businesses, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s election-year battle to reduce unemployment.

Tempers ran high as Democratic leaders failed to muster the 60 votes needed to advance the measure over a Republican filibuster…

Even if the Senate passes the small business lending bill next week, it will be too late to get it to Obama’s desk before mid-September. The House of Representatives, which passed its version of the bill in June, is set to begin a six-week break on Friday. The House will be unable to vote on the version passed by the Senate until then…

An earlier Democratic effort to pass a jobs package that included money for cash-strapped states and extended some expired individual and tax breaks was also blocked in the Senate by Republicans who argued that the extra spending should be covered by cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Senate Democrats are making another push to provide $10 billion in education funding to states and $16 billion to help with the Medicaid health program for the poor. Reid filed a separate bill on those measures and a procedural vote is set for Monday.

Surely, no one expects Republicans will support schoolchildren or the poor.

The Republican Party is the best example of American dementia. People vote for Republicans because they say that supporting the rich and powerful will bring jobs and a healthy economy. No one remembers how we got to this recession.

Repeating the same stupidity and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

On a subjective note, riht now, there is no sector of regional banking here in the Southwest with more energy and activity than small business lending. Every penny made available to community banks would be going straight back out the door into economic stimulus – and to qualified borrowers at that.

A man listed as the oldest living male in Tokyo died some 30 years ago, city officials said after his body was found mummified in his bed.

Police visited the home of Sogen Kato at the request of ward officials updating their list of centenarians ahead of Respect for the Elderly Day in September. Kato was born July 22, 1899, which would have made him 111.

Japanese welfare officials have tried to meet Kato since earlier this year, but his family members repeatedly chased them away, saying Kato was well but didn’t want to see anyone, said Tomoko Iwamatsu, an official at Tokyo’s downtown Adachi Ward, where Kato lived.

Officials grew suspicious and sought an investigation by police, who forced their way into the house Wednesday. Police said the mummified body believed to be Kato was lying in his bed, wearing underwear and pyjamas, covered with a blanket.

His granddaughter told investigators Kato holed up in his room about 30 years ago after declaring he wanted to be a living Buddha, police and Tokyo officials said. They believe Kato died soon after that.

Drinking alcohol may reduce the severity of rheumatoid arthritis according to new research. It is the first time that this effect has been shown in humans. The study also finds that alcohol consumption reduces the risk of developing the disease, confirming the results of previous studies.

The first author of the study, Dr James Maxwell…”…found that patients who had drunk alcohol most frequently had symptoms that were less severe than those who had never drunk alcohol or only drunk it infrequently. X-rays showed there was less damage to joints, blood tests showed lower levels of inflammation, and there was less joint pain, swelling and disability. This is the first time that a dose dependent inverse association between frequency of alcohol consumption and severity of RA has been shown in humans.”

Dr Maxwell and his colleagues also found that non-drinkers were four times more likely to develop RA than people who drank alcohol on more than ten days a month…

The authors point out that there are some limitations to their study. These include the fact that they only recorded the frequency rather than the amount of alcohol consumption in the month before people joined the study; there might be bias due to people recalling inaccurately how often they drank alcohol and also the information represents a snapshot of drinking behaviour at one point in time, rather than giving information about fluctuating alcohol consumption over a longer period; and, finally, there were marked differences in age and gender between the RA and the control groups, although the researchers did adjust their results for these factors.

A couple of old mates of mine – in Glasgow and up in the Western Isles – are living proof of this study. And I’m confident they’d be willing to step forward and volunteer for further research.

The United States has intervened and filed a complaint under the False Claims Act against Oracle Corporation and Oracle America Inc. The government alleges that Oracle defrauded the United States on a General Services Administration (GSA) software contract that was in effect from 1998 to 2006 and involved hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

Under the contract, GSA used Oracle’s disclosures about its commercial sales practices to negotiate the minimum discounts for government agencies who bought Oracle software. The contract required Oracle to update GSA when commercial discounts improved and extend the same improved discounts to government customers. The suit contends that Oracle misrepresented its true commercial sales practices, ultimately leading to government customers receiving deals far inferior to those Oracle gave commercial customers.

“We take seriously allegations that a government contractor has dealt dishonestly with the United States,” said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. “When contractors misrepresent their business practices to the government, taxpayers suffer.”

The suit was originally filed on by Paul Frascella, Senior Director of Contract Services at Oracle. The False Claims Act allows private citizens with knowledge of fraud to file whistleblower suits on behalf of the United States and share in any recovery. If the United States intervenes in the action and proves that a defendant has knowingly submitted false claims, it is entitled to recover three times the damage that resulted and a penalty of $5,500 to $11,000 per claim.

Often enough, whistleblowers get the shaft – and little else. Now, they may not be able to hang onto their job; but, the piece of the pie they get as finder’s fee from the prosecution is set to be tripled.

Archeologists were able to take sonar images of HMS Investigator at the weekend not long after they arrived at the remote Mercy Bay site in the Northwest Territories, Marc-Andre Bernier of Parks Canada said on Wednesday.

The Investigator was the British ship that was sent to search for two lost vessels that were part of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845 Royal Navy expedition to discover the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic to the Pacific through Canada’s Arctic Archipelago.

“This is definitely of the utmost importance,” said Mr Bernier, chief of the underwater archaeology service with Parks Canada, the federal body conducting the Arctic survey.

Archeologists plan to take more images this week from a small inflatable boat they are working with. They hope to use a robot equipped with cameras, similar to equipment now being used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, to learn about the ship.

The graves of three Royal Navy sailors, who died in 1853 of scurvy, were also discovered. The British government has been notified of the find…

The Investigator was deployed in 1850 with a 66-man crew, but was eventually abandoned after being locked in the grip of Arctic ice for two winters. The crew, led by Captain Robert John LeMesurier McClure, left behind a cache of equipment and provisions on the shore of what is now part of Aulavik National Park.

Global temperatures in the first half of the year were the hottest since records began more than a century ago, according to two of the world’s leading climate research centres.

Scientists have also released what they described as the “best evidence yet” of rising long-term temperatures. The report is the first to collate 11 different indicators – from air and sea temperatures to melting ice – each one based on between three and seven data sets, dating back to between 1850 and the 1970s…

Publishing the newly collated data in London, Peter Stott, the head of climate modelling at the UK Met Office, said despite variations between individual years, the evidence was unequivocal: “When you follow those decade-to-decade trends then you see clearly and unmistakably signs of a warming world”.

“That’s a very remarkable result, that all those data sets agree,” he added. “It’s the clearest evidence in one place from a range of different indices.”

Currently 1998 is the hottest year on record. Two combined land and sea surface temperature records from Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the US National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC) both calculate that the first six months of 2010 were the hottest on record. According to GISS, four of the six months also individually showed record highs…

The Met Office said the variations between the figures published by the different organisations are because the Met Office uses only temperature observations, NASA makes estimates for gaps in recorded data such as the polar regions, and the NCDC uses a mixture of the two approaches. The latest figures will give weight to predictions that this year could become the hottest on record.

Despite annual fluctuations, the figures also highlight the clear trend for the 2000s to be hotter than the 1990s, which in turn were clearly warmer than the previous decade, said Stott…

The cause of the warming was “dominated” by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity, said Stott. “It’s possible there’s some [other] process which can amplify other effects, such as radiation from the sun, [but] the evidence is so clear the chance there’s something we haven’t thought of seems to be getting smaller and smaller,” he said.

A questionable Android mobile wallpaper app that collects your personal data and sends it to a mysterious site in China, has been downloaded millions of times, according to data unearthed by mobile security firm Lookout.

That means that apps that seem good but are really stealing your personal information are a big risk at a time when mobile apps are exploding on smartphones, said John Hering, chief executive, and Kevin MaHaffey, chief technology officer at Lookout, in their talk at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

“Even good apps can be modified to turn bad after a lot of people download it,” MaHaffey said. “Users absolutely have to pay attention to what they download. And developers have to be responsible about the data that they collect and how they use it.”

The app in question came from Jackeey Wallpaper, and it was uploaded to the Android Market, where users can download it and use it to decorate their phones that run the Google Android operating system. It includes branded wallpapers from My Little Pony and Star Wars, to name just a couple.

It collects your browsing history, text messages, your phone’s SIM card number, subscriber identification, and even your voicemail password. It sends the data to a web site, http://www.imnet.us. That site is evidently owned by someone in Shenzhen, China. The app has been downloaded anywhere from 1.1 million to 4.6 million times. The exact number isn’t known because the Android Market doesn’t offer precise data. The search through the data showed that Jackeey Wallpaper and another developer known as iceskysl@1sters! (which could possibly be the same developer, as they use similar code) were collecting personal data. The wallpaper app asks for “phone info,” but that isn’t necessarily a clear warning…

Stay in touch on this one. Security companies which have a stake in scaring people into using their own software and services don’t get automatic praise – or belief – from my side of cranky skepticism. But, there are beaucoup sites in China selling info like this for a buck a pop – telling the purchaser they have a short time window to use it and lose it – that this really could be one of the sources feeding short-term theft.

Vitamin D promises to be the most talked-about and written-about supplement of the decade. While studies continue to refine optimal blood levels and recommended dietary amounts, the fact remains that a huge part of the population — from robust newborns to the frail elderly, and many others in between — are deficient in this essential nutrient.

If the findings of existing clinical trials hold up in future research, the potential consequences of this deficiency are likely to go far beyond inadequate bone development and excessive bone loss that can result in falls and fractures. Every tissue in the body, including the brain, heart, muscles and immune system, has receptors for vitamin D, meaning that this nutrient is needed at proper levels for these tissues to function well.

Studies indicate that the effects of a vitamin D deficiency include an elevated risk of developing (and dying from) cancers of the colon, breast and prostate; high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease; osteoarthritis; and immune-system abnormalities that can result in infections and autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

Most people in the modern world have lifestyles that prevent them from acquiring the levels of vitamin D that evolution intended us to have. The sun’s ultraviolet-B rays absorbed through the skin are the body’s main source of this nutrient. Early humans evolved near the equator, where sun exposure is intense year round, and minimally clothed people spent most of the day outdoors…

Although more foods today are supplemented with vitamin D, experts say it is rarely possible to consume adequate amounts through foods. The main dietary sources are wild-caught oily fish (salmon, mackerel, bluefish, and canned tuna) and fortified milk and baby formula, cereal and orange juice.

People in colder regions form their year’s supply of natural vitamin D in summer, when ultraviolet-B rays are most direct. But the less sun exposure, the darker a person’s skin and the more sunscreen used, the less previtamin D is formed and the lower the serum levels of the vitamin. People who are sun-phobic, babies who are exclusively breast-fed, the elderly and those living in nursing homes are particularly at risk of a serious vitamin D deficiency.